LEWISBURG – It looked like it was going to be as easy as last time. Patriot League leader Bucknell was up 22-8 before a happy crowd in the season's second showdown with preseason league favorite American.

Four weeks ago in DC, the Bison had landed an early knockdown punch and American remained woozy throughout in a 75-60 decision that wasn't that close.

But this time, the Eagles got up and rumbled and eventually took the lead late before a stunned Sojka Pavilion house.

“It felt like a heavyweight fight out there,” said BU coach Dave Paulsen. “And that's what it was – a real battle. You can't always win games when they look pretty.”

The Bison have won plenty of them pretty during an 11-1 spree since Christmas. On Wednesday night, they discovered they could win ugly against their stiffest conference competition. BU ground out nine straight points from the 3:26 to 0:18 marks to take a hard-earned 66-60 win.

Bucknell (17-8, 8-1 Patriot League) took essentially a 3-game lead on the second-place Eagles (16-8, 6-3) over whom it now owns the tiebreaker with a series sweep. That's big in this league because the regular-season champion gets home court throughout the conference playoffs that determine its automatic NCAA berth. BU has not been to the Dance since Pat Flannery's teams won back-to-back first-round games in 2005 and 2006.

It took a shrewd timeout from Paulsen redirecting the Bison toward the meal ticket they'd momentarily neglected – sophomore center Mike Muscala (game-highs of 21 points and 10 rebounds). And then some typically unsinkable belief from its perimeter bomber, another sophomore, Bryson Johnson.

And there was a smidge of serendipity in there a bit earlier where Johnson fielded a carom off point guard Darryl Shazier's ankle and hit a trey that took three complete tours of the rim before dropping.

“In the timeout, we diagrammed that play where Darryl dribbles the ball off his foot and it bounces to Bryson who hits the three with two seconds on the shot clock,” cracked Paulsen. “That was one we've been holding in the back pocket.”

From a 42-31 deficit, American clawed back in it with some atypical 3-point shooting, kicking out from double-team digs on its harried big man Vlad Moldoveanu (9 points, 6 rebounds). An Oscar Robertson national player of the week a month ago and a projected first-team All-Patriot selection, the big Romanian could not escape the dogged D of smaller but wiry Brian Cohen and the constant bracketing of Paulsen's choreographed helping defenders. Moldoveanu shot 2-of-8 from the field, making him 5-of-28 in his last three meetings with Bucknell.

The only option was trey-bombing.

“We had to,” said AU coach Jeff Jones. “They don't give you any easy ones and they make you take shots from the perimeter.”

Tiny sub guard Daniel Munoz's third triple of the night tied it at 50-50 with 11:50 still left.

With the score still tied (54-54) and Bucknell working on six empty trips in which Muscala had not taken a shot, Paulsen called time after an offensive board:

“I thought we were really tired. And I just wanted to reassert that we wanted to play through Mike.”

Upon the in-bounds, Muscala immediately received a dump-down and powered in a left-handed baby hook for a 3-point play at 4:52.

Two possessions later, BU trailed 58-57, its first deficit since 2-0. But point guard Shazier knifed into the lane and kicked to Johnson on the right wing. The sophomore had hit over half his treys (45-of-88) in the last 13 games. But this night had been tough, 2-of-7 to that point. He didn't have a lot of clearance on this attempt.

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